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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27749632">An Ending and a beginning:</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer'>TheLightdancer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Memento Mori [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Sandman (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Immortality, Who wants to live forever, sandman - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:33:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,713</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27749632</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the first of all realities, Death of the Endless says farewell to her family for the final time, believing her own end is nigh.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Memento Mori [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2304683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>An Ending and a beginning:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the beginning there was a first world, an ur-world, where all stories were told as they would be and in that time there were marvels wrought forth. Concepts of story and of song, heroes and monsters, gods and demons, the good and the bad alike.  In that beginning as in all other worlds, there were seven entities that shaped the destiny of this part of existence, the seven children of the union of Time and Night (and with them other siblings by both parents who were of equal power but whose nature was within Existence, not its governance).</p><p>Destiny, the eldest, blind and all-seeing but secretly chafing at his burden.</p><p>Dream the third of them, brooding and hopeful. Incarnation of the collective unconsciousness in both its good and its malevolent elements, a God and a Demon alike depending on where one stood. Of them all most tied to the mortals, in certain aspects.</p><p>Destruction, the prodigal, whose leaving had stunned them all and left great sorrow (and yet as this time approached he had sought out her, the Eldest sister who faced her own function in its truth for the first time and had tried to postpone it, to avoid this. It was his counsel and his help that gave her that strength and so many times in the future would she try to reward it with kindness and yet Destruction being who he was meant only so much could be done).</p><p>Desire and Despair, the twins, close in their true end as they were in their beginning, the one twin androgynous and a perfect mirror of the flesh and of its secret hopes, the other rotund and prone to tear herself with hooks, and yet of them all at the most peace at the prospect, something of the being that had been transformed into her surfacing now, at the end of all things.</p><p>And Delirium, who had worn other names and other functions and yet at the end had become Delirum once more, in sharp denial that she <em>could </em>end.</p><p>It began that first time with her arrival in the realm of the Creator, the being once Elaine Belloc of Earth, now staring at her mutely. Her uncle and her father were the last  beings beyond the family of Time and Night and herself left, and now there was just her. In the emptiness that once been all that was, she who was Source and Presence sat on a throne once resplendent and now empty of  light and purpose, staring into space.</p><p>Footsteps, the usual soft and confident tread, but each the peals of doom. A being moved toward her, clad now in her preferred form, wearing the old clothes. A tank top with a silver ankh dangling between her breasts, black jeans, gloves, and shoes. Skin of bone hue and hair and eyes that were darkness deeper than the emptiness of All That Was. The Presence looked to her, with eyes become weary from time and the workings of time, and of its slow and lingering ending.</p><p>
  <em>Did you know when I took this job how this would end? </em>
</p><p>It was not the Source who asked this, but the form that being had taken when its first shape had grown weary and cast it off before a second, more pliant one had replaced it.</p><p>The being who was then young as she would ever be nodded, softly and warily. In this ur-world she was a creation and bound by laws and she sensed the momentous nature of this. Up to striding to the emptiness of the Silver City she was of the Creation, of its laws and of its nature. If she did this, there was no turning back. Destruction had shown her the price of her following through on rebelling against this, of losing what she was and what she had been. The thought of ceasing to exist terrified her, it seemed cruel reward for all else, but she could not imagine that if the Presence disappeared and all her siblings and her family that she would truly endure. They were the last things left,, concepts that had outlived their function, and so was she. She knew it. It could not stop her, and it did not as the Presence took her hand. The entity that sustained Existence’s creation and its elements blew away, a graceful smile of relief on her face and only a cold wind leaving ashes.</p><p>For a long time Death stood, hand held in the pattern where she had felt the presence of the Presence and held her for the first time since she had saved her Uncle from his own fate. She stood and stood and stood, her fear that she would become nothing present, and yet…..she sighed, and then willed herself to the fortress that her half-siblings by both of her parents had made.</p><p>It was the first of its iterations, and to her the only one. A vast and hulking thing like a vast star of metallic shape, warded by various sigils, a last ditch effort on the part of entities that hoped they would never end to stave off harsh fate. She strode to its gate and then her hand pressed to one of the seeming portals near the lower portion of one of its curves. The sigils blazed into life and then in a tremendous crash of fire and fury the sigils failed.</p><p>She was one person and she was many, and each of her half-siblings were given soft words, even if some of them were angry and two of them slapped her. Her mouth bled from one of the slaps and she held her cheek with tears in her eyes across all of them but that could not alter the path of her function, nor of their fates. Hands were taken or embraces given and wings echoed in an increasing silence like the only thing to hear or to be heard.</p><p>Again she stood in a void, alone, her hands in her pockets, gazing out. It was closer, now. An ending, and a sharp ending at that. One that she did not wish but that she must do.</p><p>To her mother she came next, her light dulled and a mirror of the lumps of iron that would disappear with Destruction and Dream. Her eyes were dull, too, and she looked at her weakly. Death could not resist a sob at this, the sight of her mother on her side, staring broken and weak, and knowing that this was why they’d thrown her out. Her parents had seen this. They knew this. They had made a being to outlive them and the Presence, who had created all of them.</p><p>She knelt beside her mother and whispered <strong><em>I’m sorry I’m sorry I’msorry </em></strong>into her ears over and over again and in her mother’s arms for a moment felt small and loved and wanted, not the Exile, the one of her siblings forbidden to come near her parents again unless they summoned her. Her mother’s arms around her and her whisper in turn, a thing that Death heard and could not resist more tears and then another wind and ashes.</p><p>To her father’s realm, now, the journey swifter. Night had spoken quietly, Time looked at her not old and decrepit as his fate might have otherwise indicated, but as he did in his youth, young and hulking and with a thick red beard. Of them all, her brother Destruction resembled him most, the mirror image of their father in his appearance in his prime. It was a foreshadowing of her last deeds to go to him and knowing her tears were down her face reach out to him.</p><p>He looked at her and then he spoke:</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>It was wrong of us to Exile you, we should have tried to prepare you. If there is a second chance, daughter, I promise you I will try to remember and not to do this to you again. You of all our children needed more presence from us than distance and yet all you have had in truth was Destruction and Dream and neither of them are people to be around much. </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>His words were quiet, and his tone sympathetic.</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>We did things to you from fear but we never stopped loving you, O daughter of ours. You are our kin, and you will always be. We love you. </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>And with that said she had extended a hand but he held her and his right hand stroked through her hair as his left hand wiped her tears and then there was wind and emptiness. Death clenched her hands, tightly, whimpering. Now she came to the hardest tasks. Her brothers and sisters and her sibling.</p><p>Of them first was the one she was closest to, Dream. Clad in silver now, not white, for he had changed four more times since the event with Daniel Hall, but taking a face that blended all of his changes. Starlight-eyes met hers, and she mouthed desperate pleas that he shook his head at. She knew this was her task, and she knew how hard it was to have taken her family when all would continue. To take a facet did not end the entity or the concept, yet here….</p><p>He looked at her and his voice, low and resonant spoke:</p><p>
  <strong>Our parents’ sphere is done, sister. If there is no Night, for eyes to close, and no Time to bind the sphere of Dreaming, there is nothing to shape me. I am sorry that it is I who goes first, sister dearest. Of all of us we have been the closest, and I have never thought this fair to you, that your love is given most to those who know least what to do with it. </strong>
</p><p>She didn’t even extend her hand this time, her brother held her and her last words from her brother as he literally became a cloud of dust and vanishing skull was:</p><p>
  <strong>Remember sister, let yourself dream and I shall be with you beyond the end of all things, and nothing can ever change this. </strong>
</p><p>And then there was her youngest sister, Del. Before her eyes Del changed again and her expression became softer, as Delight looked for the last time through eyes that had once been hers.</p><p><em><span class="u">I love you,</span></em> she whispered as she jumped up into Death’s arms<em><span class="u">, I love you. You bring me happiness and that’s why the last I want you to see is that you make Devolution, Devotion, and Delirium Delightful. This is you. Please, remember this. Remember me, that it is me. </span></em></p><p>And then she held ashes and shook herself off, holding herself and curling up for a moment. Two of them gone, and the inexorable path to walk moved still further. For an eternity in a timeless realm absent the Void that Night created she held herself, and then a low and firm voice spoke, echoing with a perfect mirror of their father’s voice.</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>I didn’t want to believe Del when she said you would outlive the universe. I gave you the hope that you would not. If I am wrong, sister. Forgive me and do not seek to punish me. If I am right, then we will meet each other in that space beyond spaces, where concepts go to be reborn, and we shall never be parted. </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>She whimpered, looking him in the eye.</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>I want to be with you. </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>Destruction smiled.</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>We will always be with you. </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>It was the beginning-world where she did not know how truly Endless she would be, where all of this experience, all of the loss, was new and raw and built scars on her heart to match that of the blade of that which had tried to destroy her sister, that which was held in a crystal on her belt, for it had a fate and a function beyond this world.</p><p>There was a sister looking at her younger brother with her heart breaking, wanting this timeless moment to stretch onward, so many words left unspoken, not knowing then how many future worlds and times would see them remain so, how many times regret would crystallize and callous around her heart, lest speaking it mean that she would have to speak it again and it mean nothing.</p><p>No words, simply her brother pulling her into a hug and rocking her, no words. Just him humming one of the old songs and not fading until the last of the notes faded with him, in an endless sound that yet ended, and her hands empty and an emptiness in her growing. A clammy hand on one of her shoulders, a hand that was soft and strong at the same time on the other, and she looked up.</p><p>The twins, now.</p><p>Despair spoke for both of them:</p><p>
  <em>I see but one thing in my mirrors, at the end. You. Do not let my realm be the last that we see of each other. We are not sisters in full in blood but we are in heart. You have been more than you know. Sorrow is a useful servant and a poor master. Remember, but remember in joy and the words of our sister. </em>
</p><p>She worked herself to her feet, staring at them mutely. Now there were four beings left in the immensity of the known universe. She stared at Despair’s face for a long time, letting her hand caress it, her eyes closed, as she memorized every detail and tears streaked her face. The fangs that jutted were traces of the person who had taken the sword, the Jotunn whose incandescent wrath at Desire’s manipulations had seen Death nearly slain twice, and that one had been the only one she’d dared let herself love, until her heart was shattered.</p><p>Love and Despair intertwined and then her sister took her hand and with a soft smile vanished. Desire surprised her by picking her up and holding her tightly, xir cheek against hers.</p><p>
  <strong>You may not believe this, sister, but we all love you and all loved you. I have seen what Del saw, what made her mad. I hope that Del was wrong to see it, but if she isn’t, on behalf of every future iteration of me and what I may do, I am sorry, and I love you, and I love all of us. You are not my enemy, nor is Dream, nor is anyone. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>And I hope that she is wrong, and that I am wrong, and that there is but a reunion ahead. If there is not…..you are wiser and stronger than all of us. Do not yield to darkness, sister, for that way lies folly. </strong>
</p><p>And then there was nothing but her levitating with her wings out and rippling with eyes upon eyes upon eyes of a vaguely golden hue, in a universe where there were only two entities.</p><p>Outward she strode, knowing what awaited. In a timeless space of nothingness she strode, in a place where there was no direction, only him. Her older brother, who as ever remained looking at his book.</p><p>He thanked her, but he did not look at her or touch her, for which she was grateful. Then he paused, and she looked to her side and moved with a slow tread.</p><p> She strode, her steps soundless, her face marked with a serenity that was not in truth there, and she was at his side and then there were voices. The Eremite who tried to capture her twice. And her old friend, one of the few mortals she had truly connected to.</p><p>Words were spoken and she sent Erik back into the past with a long walk that would earn enmity and a first attempt to capture her on her first mortal day after her return, and then a second and much sharper attempt with the aid of Uxas of Apokolips that had worked, for a time, until he had learned why the Lords of the Fourth World did not make bargains easily or kindly and had made a bargain in turn that left her feeling befouled by doing so.</p><p>It was with no small amount of satisfaction that she had sent him there, and then handed Tim the owl-that-was-a-yoyo, and sent hm back with that bittersweet smile. Then turned to her brother as Tim vanished, her hand on her brother’s shoulder and as he thanked her again there was nothing in the wideness of existence but her.</p><p>Here, there was the first of all things, and she was alone and very, very small in infinite darkness and coldness. She did not know what to do, so she strode in a direction if direction there was, and her feet ached and her being stung, her ankh marked with a black line as she clenched her fists and made a primordial soundless shriek at the realization that she was not going to end. She existed, and she would continue to exist.</p><p>Further she moved, until there was Something in the Nothingness. Another being stood, likewise as shellshocked as she was.</p><p>He spoke with a sensation of power that made her ears ache.</p><p>
  <em>I am Oblivion, and my multiverse is gone. And I am all that’s left. </em>
</p><p>She turned to him and took his hand, weeping in relief when he did not die, and weeping in rage that she did not take his hand and vanish in turn.</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>I was Death, one of the Endless. Now there is neither of my functions or my siblings, nor anything but me. </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>Oblivion handed her a ball of yarn and needles.</p><p>
  <em>Remember them. </em>
</p><p>He said.</p><p>She took them, and placed them in a small satchel she created and she walked, discovering a wider cosmology she had never dared to imagine. In this first venture, she crept far beyond her worlds that were, discovering Gods great and terrible, and in a sphere beyond time and space encountered that which burbled and gnawed at itself at the center of nuclear space and had endless drummers and flautists, that which was known to Pegana as Mana-Yood-Soo-Shai and to others as the Daemon Sultan, Azathoth.</p><p>In Halls where dwelt seven thrones but six entities, she met the twin faces of the Daemon Sultan’s very being, and a being akin to her but of a nature profoundly different, and slunk away from them to knit, and she knit for a time infinite and less than an eyeblink. In Timeless Halls she knit every detail of her life, and that of all of her kin, the good and the bad. From the beginning when the Presence and the Source had made them all, to the end and ending the tapestry with her hands knitting it and woven into that pattern.</p><p>She did not know how long it took her to do it, and she poured her heart and her very soul into it. That first time, after those encounters, this was her life, her sphere, her very being in its fullness. Stories of all of her six siblings and herself and of the mortals that encountered them, and the Gods and the Goddesses, each being she had breathed into life and each that she had taken, memorializing all that had existed or would come to exist.</p><p>She folded it up and placed it in its satchel and she closed her eyes and in Timeless Halls stepped, willingly and contentedly onto the path of Dreams.</p><p>She did not know how long it took her to feel the tug and yet when she did she grasped her first sigil and found herself breathing life into the Source, and watching as the entity created things. She was amazed and she was appalled to realize that the Source that she marked life thereof was not the one she knew. That her parents came into being and they had the form but not the person.</p><p>Then her siblings, born as infants and truly born and she adult early on. Her parents treated her all the same as if she were one of them, until that time that Time had perceived that truth and that she threw off his presence by seeming <em>solid </em>where all else <em>was fluid and gas and able to be many things and a few things and nothing, in a sense. </em>From there she was Exiled once more, and the bitterness of long life took her, each step along a path.</p><p>When it came time to end things again, the second time, her siblings did not understand the haunted expression on her face, nor the ways she acted save Destiny, who was more distant to her than the first. The second time she was alone in existence, she wailed again, not in grief but anger. Her power exploded out in a great sphere in nothingness and it was impotent, and she was nothing in nothingness.</p><p>She took the yarn and she wove another tapestry, face dull and her presence in a strange dimension whose nature was unknown to her marking the passage of non-being until she fulfilled her function again.</p><p>And yet each time, as her existence began to stretch onward into its deep shadows, she wove and she created a memory of each and every face, ensuring that as her tapestry-room went from holding two to thousands, that each and every face was remembered, and remembered in truth, the good and the bad.</p><p>In an infinite existence, if there was nothing else to her, she would ensure that none would ever be forgotten, and that she who could never die, would give them love that would outlive the stars, and a memory that would outlive the very concept of memory itself.</p><p>She placed the latest tapestry, the nine hundredth, in her room and then she went to the one in its center, near which was her first sigil with its black mark through it. She stroked the very top of the tapestry, where all of her kin, Time, Night, her half-siblings, and her fellows of the Endless were there, and her face small and distant and the smallest of them.</p><p>A soft smile was on her face, and Death let herself mourn for the Dead.</p>
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